Friday, May 31, 2024

 



Lithobrake's self-titled debut album is out today! You can find it on Bandcamp, Soundcloud, Spotify, Apple, all the usual places. 

We have been holed up in a storage space in D.C. for the last couple of years bashing out these songs and recording them, and I'm really proud of this record. Most of the songs were written by singer/guitarist Craig Grande, and this is the third band I've started with him, so I was excited to finally get to the finish line on a full-length album with him. Some of these songs, like "Fascinated" and "Stay," we first started messing around with in our earliest practices together almost 10 years ago, and so we were pulling out all these old songs for Lithobrake and then writing new ones and ended up with this 16-song behemoth of a record. It was really my first time producing and mixing an album where I was trying to execute someone else's vision, I'm really proud of how it came out. We should be playing shows in D.C. and Baltimore this year. 

9:26 AM

Movie Diary

Tuesday, May 28, 2024

 





a) The Iron Claw
Every year there's at least one A24 movie that Letterboxd types go nuts about and get totally outraged when it gets no Oscar nominations, and The Iron Claw was this year's Uncut Gems. So I went into it with reasonably high hopes, particularly because I don't know that much about '80s wrestling, so I figured I wouldn't get hung up on visual or historical accuracy the way I do when music biopics drive me crazy. Invariably, though, I started furrowing my brow when two major life events would happen in consecutive scenes, and I'd go online and realize those two events occurred years apart in real life, and then realized they erased an entire Von Erich brother from the story (apparently a movie where 4 out of 5 brothers die young is fine, but 5 out of 6 brothers dying young is just too much!). Maybe being a journalist has turned me into a bad audience for biopics, but dammit, I feel like if the truth is interesting enough to make a movie about, you might as well tell the truth as much as possible in the movie, nobody needs all this lazy Hollywood shorthand and compression. And the movie's biggest stylistic flourish, the afterlife scene...I don't know, man, knowing a guy said he wanted to kill himself to join his brothers in Heaven, actually depicting that happening is incredibly fucked up. And of course I at least knew enough about '80s wrestling to recognize that Aaron Dean Eisenberg was laughably bad as Ric Flair. But listen, I'm only going on about this stuff because they were just frustrating shortcomings in an otherwise really impressive, emotionally affecting movie with excellent performances from, Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, Holt McCallany, and Lily James.

I think Will Gluck's first two movies, Fired Up and Easy A, are two of the funniest studio comedies of the last 20 years, even if his work since then has been a little more anonymous and uneven. So I was curious to see Anyone But You, the biggest rom com in a while and Gluck's second biggest box office hit to date (after, uh, the first Peter Rabbit movie). I found Anyone But You kind of a letdown, though, there were just so many forced, overly complicated "physical comedy" setpieces that made it feel like a Farrelly movie. Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney were charming enough and had chemistry, and the success of this definitely cemented them as movie stars, but it just felt a shaky bridge to get everyone to better career prospects. 

c) Lisa Frankenstein
Now that there's a pretty strong consensus that Jennifer's Body is the best or only particularly good movie Diablo Cody's written, I'm glad she got another crack at a weird high school horror comedy, even if Lisa Frankenstein isn't quite up to the same standard. I felt like it started off slow but got a little more demented and entertaining by the end. It was directed by Zelda Williams, daughter of Robin, and I feel like he'd be proud of what an absurd and playful movie she's made. 

d) She Came To Me
She Came To Me is one of those rom coms where you've got some inherently silly situation where Peter Dinklage is married to Anne Hathaway and sleeps with Marisa Tomei and he's just miserable for the entire movie. It's also a little surreal and dreamlike and has a large cast and subplots and I wish it all got tied together well. Instead, it just kind of ends with a shrug, and Bruce Springsteen singing easily the worst song he's ever written for a film. 

e) The Idea of You
I am generally very pro-Anne Hathaway and miss her movie star peak, so when I saw she had two movies recently hit streaming I decided to watch them both. And The Idea of You is the less ambitious of the two but also more successful at what it was going for, kind of a playful wish fulfillment spin on the Harry Styles/Olivia Wilde relationship. Michael Showalter was one of the first cast members on "The State" to have a catchphrase back in the day ("I'm outta heeeere"), but he's fostered a pretty good career behind the camera including this, The Big Sick, The Lovebirds, and The Eyes of Tammy Faye. 

f) Argylle
I thought Kingsman: The Secret Service was a silly little fun movie and went into Argylle hoping for the same basic deal. And it was mostly decent, just a bit too long, and by the second big twist I was kind of checked out and just waiting for them to get it over with. Also, there's a thing where Bryce Dallas Howard will look at Sam Rockwell, blink, and imagine she's seeing Henry Cavill -- they could've done that two or three times to get the point across, but they did it maybe 200 times, over and over, it got really really annoying. 

g) The Beach Boys
This new Disney+ documentary is pretty good, but with so many big expansive music docuseries happening, it almost feels like they went too small with a doc under 2 hours covering the 60-year history of one of the most important American bands ever. There was some great footage, some insightful interviews, but I'm sure it could've been a lot longer and more in-depth. 

h) Kiss The Future
This documentary is about the Bosnian genocide in the '90s, and how U2 got involved in doing satellite link-ups with Sarajevo during the Zoo TV Tour, writing Passengers' "Miss Sarajevo," and eventually played a concert in Sarajevo in 1997 after the end of the war. It's easy to be cynical about U2's overly familiar role as compassionate activist rock stars, but this movie is pretty moving at times and tells the story well, although it's funny that the emotional climax of the movie features the band performing in their goofy PopMart Tour outfits. 

i) Queen Rock Montreal
The last shows of Queen's tour in support of The Game, really right there at the climactic end of their reign as a superstar act in North America, were filmed in late 1981, shortly after the release of "Under Pressure." It's been released many times on VHS and DVD and CD over the years, often under the title We Will Rock You, sometimes packaged with their Live Aid performance. But recently it was released in theaters and on Disney+ as Queen Rock Montreal. And man, I'd seen lots of clips before but the whole thing is just awesome, I love hearing how they take those big lavish studio tracks and reproduce them as four guys with minimal taped accompaniment (except for "Bohemian Rhapsody," where they just play the middle part of the song straight off the album). 

j) Amy
I wrote about Amy Winehouse recently, and while I was working on that I watched the 2015 documentary about her, which I think I'd been afraid to watch when it came out. And man, it is rough to just see how young she was when her life went off the rails, even before she made Back To Black, just this tragic arc happening in plain view of the public and nobody doing much to stop it. I understand why her family was unhappy with the film but I thought it was relatively fair to everybody, just really depressing and hard to watch. 

k) UglyDolls
My son watched this one day and I was kind of impressed with the visuals, they did a good job of transferring the look of the UglyDolls plushies to animation, especially when something like the Trolls movies are genuinely hideous. 

10:18 AM

My Top 100 Singles of 1975

Tuesday, May 21, 2024






























Here's the Spotify playlist:

1. Bruce Springsteen - "Born To Run"
2. Electric Light Orchestra - "Evil Woman"
3. Aerosmith - "Sweet Emotion"
4. David Bowie - "Fame"
5. Earth, Wind & Fire - "Shining Star"
6. Sweet - "The Ballroom Blitz"
7. Average White Band - "Pick Up The Pieces"
8. Natalie Cole – “This Will Be”
9. Pink Floyd - "Wish You Were Here"
10. Richard O’Brien, Patricia Quinn, Nell Campbell and Charles Gray – “Time Warp”
11. Bob Dylan - "Tangled Up In Blue"
12. Ohio Players - "Fire"
13. War - "Low Rider"
14. Minnie Riperton - "Lovin' You"
15. Bob Marley & The Wailers - "No Woman, No Cry (live)"
16. Ace - "How Long"
17. The Doobie Brothers - "Black Water"
18. Pete Wingfield – “Eighteen With A Bullet”
19. David Bowie - "Young Americans"
20. Hot Chocolate - "You Sexy Thing"
21. Bee Gees - "Jive Talkin'"
22. Rush - "Fly By Night"
23. Styx - "Lady"
24. Labelle - "Lady Marmalade"
25. Barry White - "You're The First, The Last, My Everything"
26. ZZ Top - "Tush"
27. Bruce Springsteen - "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out"
28. The Eagles - "One Of These Nights"
29. Bad Company - "Feel Like Makin' Love"
30. Roxy Music - "Love Is The Drug"
31. The O'Jays - "I Love Music"
32. Supertramp - "Bloody Well Right"
33. Ohio Players - "Love Rollercoaster"
34. Pink Floyd - "Have A Cigar"
35. Steely Dan - "Black Friday"
36. Bay City Rollers - "Saturday Night"
37. Lynyrd Skynyrd - "Saturday Night Special"
38. Nazareth – “Hair of the Dog”
39. Bee Gees - "Nights On Broadway"
40. Led Zeppelin - "Kashmir"
41. America – “Sister Golden Hair”
42. Parliament – “Chocolate City”
43. Bob Seger - "Katmandu"
44. The Spinners – “Sadie”
45. Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes – “Bad Luck”
46. Dwight Twilley Band – “I’m On Fire”
47. Stevie Wonder - "Boogie On Reggae Woman"
48. East L.A. Car Pool – “Like They Say In L.A.”
49. The Isley Brothers - "Fight The Power"
50. Elton John - "Someone Saved My Life Tonight"
51. Little Feat - "All That You Dream"
52. Willie Nelson - "Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain"
53. Freddy Fender - "Before The Next Teardrop Falls"
54. Simon & Garfunkel - "My Little Town"
55. KC & The Sunshine Band – “That’s The Way (I Like It)”
56. Earth, Wind & Fire – “That’s The Way Of The World”
57. Bad Company - "Good Lovin' Gone Bad"
58. Steely Dan - "Bad Sneakers"
59. War - "Why Can't We Be Friends?"
60. Linda Ronstadt - "When Will I Be Loved"
61. 10cc - "I'm Not In Love"
62. Pilot – “Magic”
63. Glen Campbell - "Rhinestone Cowboy"
64. Fleetwood Mac - "Over My Head"
65. Crack The Sky - "She's A Dancer"
66. Barry Manilow - "Mandy"
67. The Who - "Squeeze Box"
68. Average White Band - "Cut The Cake"
69. The Eagles - "Best Of My Love"
70. Bad Company - "Shooting Star"
71. The Spinners – “Games People Play”
72. Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons – “Who Loves You”
73. Led Zeppelin - "Houses Of The Holy"
74. Captain & Tenille – “The Way I Want To Touch You”
75. Silver Convention – “Fly, Robin, Fly”
76. Ronnie Laws – “Always There”
77. Al Green - "Full Of Fire"
78. The Staple Singers – “Let’s Do It Again”
79. Funkadelic – “Red Hot Mama”
80. Bruce Springsteen - "Thunder Road"
81. Elton John - "Philadelphia Freedom"
82. Morris Albert – “Feelings”
83. Earth, Wind & Fire – “Sing A Song”
84. Bad Company - "Run With The Pack"
85. Supertramp - "Dreamer"
86. Led Zeppelin - "Trampled Under Foot"
87. Thin Lizzy – “Rosalie”
88. The Doobie Brothers - "Take Me In Your Arms (Rock Me A Little While)"
89. Fleetwood Mac – “Warm Ways”
90. The Captain & Tenille - "Love Will Keep Us Together"
91. Van McCoy & The Soul City Symphony - "The Hustle"
92. Little Feat - "Long Distance Love"
93. Jefferson Starship – “Miracles”
94. Bob Seger – “Beautiful Loser”
95. Jigsaw – “Sky High”
96. America – “Lonely People”
97. John Denver - "Thank God I'm A Country Boy"
98. C.W. McCall - "Convoy"
99. Thin Lizzy – “Wild One”
100. Joe Cocker - "You Are So Beautiful"

There are 99 songs on the Spotify playlist, and the missing track is #48 on the list, "Like They Say In L.A." It's the sole release by the group East L.A. Car Pool, and it peaked at #72 on the Hot 100, and I only stumbled upon it because I comb through random weeks of the Hot 100 to try and make sure I don't miss any essential songs on these lists. A true one hit wonder! You can hear a scratchy vinyl rip on YouTube, it's pretty catchy! As far as I can tell the group only made 3 songs, including the B-side of "Like They Say" and a song that turned up on a British compilation of obscure soul and funk in 2002. The B-side, "Linda Chicana," was written by jazz pianist/trombonist Mark Levine (a sideman for Stan Getz and Joe McPhee, among others), who died in 2022. 

Previously:

4:01 AM

Monthly Report: May 2024 Singles

Monday, May 20, 2024

 







1. Kendrick Lamar - "Not Like Us"
The week that the Drake/Kendrick Lamar beef boiled over is one of those surreal moments that will stick with me a long time -- particularly the Friday night when I listened to Drake's "Family Matters" just before going into an event, and while I was there Kendrick dropped "Meet The Grahams" and I listened to that in the car before going home. But it was 24 hours later when Kendrick released "Not Like Us," an extremely mean and ingratiatingly catchy DJ Mustard-produced track, that the whole thing became surprisingly fun. Kendrick Lamar and DJ Mustard are probably the two most important figures in the resurgence of west coast rap in the 2010s, but they've never worked together much. The only other time Kendrick has been on a Mustard beat that I can remember is Jeezy's "R.I.P." remix (which also featured Chris Brown -- dissing Drake!). So "Not Like Us" fulfills a desire to hear Kendrick on a Mustard banger while also dealing a decisive blow in the feud. I wrote a recent Complex piece covering some of the harshest stuff Drake and Kendrick said about each other, and honestly, a lot of what's happened doesn't sit well with me, especially in light of the ongoing Diddy story, perhaps the most serious abuse and assault allegations against an A-list hip-hop artist ever. Either Drake and Kendrick are bluffing about the dirt they claim to have on each other for entertainment value, which is kind of gross, or it's true and they're rapping playful punchlines about it, which is also gross. Here's the 2024 singles Spotify playlist that I update every month. 

2. Hozier - "Too Sweet"
On Friday, my wife and I saw Hozier at Merriweather Post Pavilion, and it was a really great show, he's fantastic live. I think it's fun to see an act perform a big hit song while it's their current single, but having bought our tickets as a Christmas gift back last year, I know this tour sold out months ago, so the entire crowd was people who've been Hozier fans long before "Too Sweet" came out and became his first #1 single this year. And that kind of made it an even better experience, because there was a pretty big reaction when he played it, but there was also a pretty big reaction when he'd play certain album tracks from 5-10 years ago. It feels like he's in the perfect position to have this enormous crossover hit without it really substantially changing this great career he already has. 

3. Lucky Daye - "HERicane"
The recent Bruno Mars-penned Lucky Daye single "That's You" was pretty good, but I'm a lot more excited about the follow-up "HERicane." The titular wordplay is a little cheesy but this is such a perfect summery groove to hear him on. 

4. Olivia Rodrigo - "Obsessed"
Guts is still one of my favorite albums of the past year or so, and the 5 songs on the recent deluxe edition all feel like worthy additions, I don't even know if "Obsessed" is my favorite of the new tracks but I love hearing it on the radio, the bass on the chorus is so wonderfully grungy. 

5. Gracie Abrams - "Risk"
Gracie Abrams seems very much poised to be one of the next big pop girls -- she's opened for Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo, and Swift is on her upcoming album. She even sounds a bit like Rodrigo, although her music is more wispy and acoustic and less up my alley. I really like "Risk," though, I think it's a really well written song. I just realized that Gracie Abrams is the daughter of big time Hollywood director J.J. Abrams, which makes her rapid ascent kind of eye-rolling, but whatever, I like this song. 

6. Hailey Whitters - "I'm In Love"
I hate how slow-moving Billboard's Country Airplay chart is compared to other radio formats, it seems like country stations just take forever to decide whether they like a song. "I'm In Love" has been on the chart for 30 weeks, over half a year, and still hasn't peaked higher than #47. I like it a lot more than Whitters' previous hit "Everything She Ain't," though, it's so bright and sweet and has a little bit of zydeco in the accordion part. 

7. Don Toliver - "Bandit"
Travis Scott sidekick Don Toliver has always seemed to me like a 5th-generation knockoff of better melodic rap singers like Future, but he finally landed on a song I like, "Bandit" has been really growing on me. 

8. J.P. - "Bad Bitty"
J.P. is a college sophomore from Milwaukee who became famous when this goofy 102-second track went viral. And even though the song's low end is all distorted and it feels like a relatively amateur effort, he's got a real undeniable star quality and he packs so many catchy melodic hooks into this short song. 

9. The Black Crowes - "Wanting And Waiting"
Jay Joyce has produced a lot of my favorite country records of the past couple decades (Eric Church, Lainey Wilson, Brothers Osborne, etc.) but he also occasionally produces rock acts, and he was really a perfect choice for the Black Crowes' comeback album, Happiness Bastards sounds fantastic and this song has a little of that Shake Your Money Maker swagger to it. 

10. Renee Rapp f/ Megan Thee Stallion - "Not My Fault"
I'm disappointed that nothing from Renee Rapp's great debut album Snow Angel got any attention from Top 40 radio, but I'm cool with this track from the Mean Girls soundtrack taking off, it's lightweight but entertaining. 

The Worst Single of the Month: Shinedown - "A Symptom of Being Human"
Shinedown never quite became a huge divisive band people love to hate like their post-grunge contemporaries Creed and Nickelback, but they've been insanely successful on rock radio, with the most #1 songs (19!) in the 43-year-history of Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart. Their biggest hit, 2009's "Second Chance," is a genuinely good song that I thought deserved its success, but their latest single "A Symptom of Being Human" is their first crossover to pop radio and alternative radio in a long while, and it's just absolute dogshit. 

4:00 AM

Saturday, May 18, 2024


 











I ranked every Queen album for Spin, and also wrote a piece about Amy Winehouse. 

10:16 PM

Friday, May 17, 2024

 



Lithobrake's new single "Wayney Day" is on all platforms (Spotify, Apple, etc.) now, our self-titled debut album is out on May 31st. 

11:46 AM

My Top 50 Albums of 1975

Wednesday, May 15, 2024

























Here's the Spotify playlist with a track from each album:

1. Bob Dylan - Blood On The Tracks
2. Willie Nelson - Red Headed Stranger
3. Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run
4. Patti Smith – Horses
5. Neil Young and Crazy Horse – Zuma
6. Parliament - Chocolate City
7. Crack The Sky - Crack The Sky
8. Aerosmith - Toys In The Attic
9. Roberta Flack – Feel Like Makin’ Love
10. Steely Dan - Katy Lied
11. Fleetwood Mac - Fleetwood Mac
12. Joni Mitchell – The Hissing Of Summer Lawns
13. Paul Simon - Still Crazy After All These Years
14. Little Feat - The Last Record Album
15. Bob Marley and the Wailers - Natty Dread
16. Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti
17. Heart - Dreamboat Annie
18. Grateful Dead – Blues For Allah
19. Queen - A Night At The Opera
20. Brian Eno - Another Green World
21. Ohio Players – Honey
22. Donna Summer – Love To Love You Baby
23. Thin Lizzy - Fighting
24. Earth, Wind & Fire – That’s The Way Of The World
25. David Bowie - Young Americans
26. Electric Light Orchestra - Face The Music
27. Neil Young – Tonight’s The Night
28. Lou Reed - Coney Island Baby 
29. Tom Waits - Nighthawks At The Diner
30. Rush - Fly By Night
31. Roxy Music – Siren
32. Elton John - Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy
33. Bill Withers - Making Music
34. Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here
35. Bob Dylan and the Band - The Basement Tapes
36. Daryl Hall & John Oates - Daryl Hall & John Oates
37. various artists – The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Original Soundtrack)
38. The Who - The Who By Numbers
39. The Allman Brothers Band - Win, Lose Or Draw
40. Parliament - Mothership Connection
41. Gary Wright – The Dream Weaver
42. Robert Palmer – Pressure Drop
43. Split Enz - Mental Notes
44. John Prine - Common Sense
45. Al Green - Al Green Is Love
46. Nazareth - Hair of the Dog
47. Lou Reed - Metal Machine Music
48. Black Sabbath - Sabotage
49. Sparks – Indiscreet
50. The Eagles - One Of These Nights

A few years ago, I posted a playlist of deep album cuts by the British band The 1975, and for kicks I also included a playlist of some of my favorite deep cuts from albums actually released in 1975, so that was kind of a prototype for this post's playlist with a lot of the same songs.A pretty damn good year, I think. Other than Patti Smith's debut, punk wasn't really on record yet in '75, so the kind of weird proto-alternative stuff like Brian Eno and Lou Reed stand out more. People act like meat-and-potatoes blues-based classic rock all sucked in the mid-'70s but there's so many awesome records here. 

Previously:

6:38 PM

TV Diary

Tuesday, May 14, 2024

 






I feel like putting an American playing a Brit at the center of any film or series is asking for trouble, but I will hand it to Elisabeth Moss, her accent work in "The Veil" is very good, if this was my first time seeing her in something I'd just assume she's English. I like it so far, I love seeing Josh Charles play a spy, he's such a great, underrated actor, but I'm curious how this story is going to pay off in a 6-episode miniseries, so far it almost feels like this could or should have just been a 2-hour feature, but maybe I'm underestimating the potential for twists. 

I still have a couple of episodes left of the first season of Netflix's "Sandman" series that I intend to finish at some point, but I have to say, I already enjoy this spinoff series more. Great cast, good visual effects, clever approach to some familiar tropes about ghosts interacting with the living. 

Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities is the classic example of a contemporary novel that was a huge acclaimed hit and was adapted into a critically panned box office flop. I've sometimes wondered if someone would take a mulligan on Bonfire and try to make a better movie or miniseries out of it, but David E. Kelley and Netflix took the probably smarter approach of adapting Wolfe's next novel, A Man In Full. Jeff Daniels is from Georgia, like his character in this, but it's funny, I never even realized he's from the south. I can't stop thinking of Tom Pelphrey's character Raymond Peepgrass as Frank Grimes from "The Simpsons," like visually and in terms of the characters personality and role in the story, it's very close. 

"Sugar" starts out as a pretty conventional neo noir story with Colin Farrell as a modern day detective who's obsessed with old mystery movies, with frequent cuts to clips of old black & white movies -- sometimes it gets a little meta, as when he alludes to "L.A. Confidential" in an episode where a significant character is played by James Cromwell. But Apple TV+ has marketed it as a "genre-bending" series, and someone noticed that Apple TV+'s announcement of the show two years ago described it as "sci-fi." So I'd been watching the show for weeks waiting to see what the twist would be, nervous that it would be some kind of ripoff of The Matrix where the guy is in a simulated reality. It turns out it's not that, but I can't say I love the twist or the way they revealed it, it felt like they put all their chips on it being a mind-blowing surprise and I don't know if the show has too much else going for it. 

This PBS series on "Masterpiece Theater" (which they just call "MASTERPIECE" now, I guess) is not about the state of Maryland, which you could probably guess from the capitalized L. Instead, it's about a recently deceased woman named Mary's life on the Isle of Man, which is a pretty eye-rolling explanation for the title, but he show is good. 

Two years between seasons is just long enough that I feel kind of surprised that a show still exists, but I love "Hacks," I'm glad it's back. It feels like they're intent on changing the dynamic between Deborah and Ava and their respective careers each season, and I hope they don't outsmart themselves and break the show by not recognizing that people are just happy to watch these characters interact with or without a clever story arc. I like this season so far, though, it's fun to see Deborah in comeback mode after her gambles of the first two seasons paid off and see they still have interesting stories to tell about that, she doesn't just ride off into the sunset. 

It's fun that Quinta Brunson was able to make this transition from funny videos on the internet to prime time television and now she's regularly helping other people do that by giving Casey Frey or Sabrina Brier guest spots on "Abbott Elementary." 

I didn't realize that "Bob's Burgers" was one of the few network shows that came back with new episodes last fall during the WGA and SAG strikes, thanks to the slower production schedules of animated shows. So I've had a whole bunch of "Bob's Burgers" episodes to catch up on lately, which was nice. I loved the episode about Regular-Sized Rudy, I like that with "Simpsons"-like longevity they can really zoom in a little more on supporting characters over the years. I don't like the voice they have for Jimmy Pesto now, but it's at least funny in the sense that it reminds me that the original Jimmy Pesto was fired for being at the Capitol on January 6th. 

My kids love the Sonic the Hedgehog movies so they were locked in for the new spinoff series, I think they watched all of it in one day. Adam Pally is well-equipped for this kind of silliness but I hope he gets more work outside this franchise. 

This Netflix series is framed as a behind-the-scenes documentary on the set of a French director's debut film, it hits some familiar mockumentary beats but it has its own voice and comedic rhythm, I really like it. 

Another French show on Netflix, a gritty crime drama about a Marseille drug dealer, kind of tired of these kinds of shows. 

A Mexican fantasy series on Disney+ about kids discovering a musical score with magical properties, some nice production values but it's in that zone where it's really for kids but not something my kids would be interested in, they mostly like animation. 

This South Korean series on Netflix reminds me of a certain genre of American show, about a young woman who endures a big career setback, returns to her hometown, and has a romance plot with a childhood friend. If this was an American show it'd get at least three seasons on CW. 

This Indian show is kind of a morbid black comedy about infidelity, murder, and soup, I like it. 

A Netflix miniseries from Netflix, kind of an emotionally messy relationship comedy.

A South Korean show where one surgeon's spirit possesses the body of another surgeon and together they become a composite of both of their best qualities. Totally deranged concept, played fairly straight as a medical drama, I love it. 

Another South Korean show that takes place in a hospital, but kind of a more straightforward character-driven thing about a nurse in a psychiatric ward. 

An Indian miniseries based on the true story of a group of railway workers who stepped up and started saving lives when there was a gas leak from a factory and people all over a town start dropping dead. A nice inspiring story but also terrifying because I never thought about the possibility of somethig like that happening. 

A French reality competition show on Netflix with 13 people strategizing and bickering for a cash prize, feels even darker and more exploitive than a lot of American shows in this style. 

I like soccer a lot as far as sports go, but I don't follow it (or any sport) closely. So it was cool to see an up close view of some of the major figures I do know, Manchester City and Pep Guardiola, in this Netflix docuseries. 

Netflix has been experimenting more and more with live shows, and with creating new spins on the late night talk show format. And this John Mulaney thing, which just wrapped up a 6-episode run, feels like probably the best one they've done so far, and I say that as someone who's never been hugely into Mulaney. It just feels like he threw together the bits of Conan O'Brien and Dick Cavett's shows that he liked, added a bunch of other strange comedy bits and call-in segments and left it all deliberately, self-deprecatingly loose. My personal favorite parts were Richard Kind on sidekick duty, Brian Grazer telling anecdotes about Apollo 13 and American Gangster to children, and that wonderful Wang Chung theme song. The British chat show-style panels with all the guests together on the couch were kind of chaotic and the weakest parts of the show, though. 

A 5-hour docuseries about a happy-go-lucky band of pop metal hitmakers like Bon Jovi might seem like overkill, but I like that they get the space to really tell their story in granular detail, and show a bit of the daily reality of a huge touring band getting older. Richie Sambora left the band a decade ago, so it's fun to see him pop up and tell his part of the story, I really think he's an essential part of Bon Jovi so I'd love to see him back onstage with them. And that first episode, seeing Jon Bon Jovi get his Jersey rock education from Bruce Springsteen and Southside Johnny, I love that stuff. 

As someone who's spent the last 14 years on Twitter, it's weird to watch a Hulu docuseries recap so much of the stuff I watched unfold in real time, all the 'Meet me in Temecula' type moments, a really unusual walk down memory lane. But maybe it's the right time to memorialize this era of social media, who knows how much longer lasts before Elon finally kills it for good. 

I feel like sometimes celebrities get to do reality shows based around doing really fun things that a lot of us wish we could do, like Selena Gomez spending time with famous chefs at major restaurants, learning stuff from them and trying to create her own dish that would be good enough to be served there. It's weird to say but Gomez is such a natural for reality TV, the somewhat stilted quality of her performance on "Only Murders in the Building" totally falls away when she's just being herself on camera. 

This Netflix show is about a real Arkansas jail experimenting with giving inmates more freedom, I'm a little uncomfortable with this being turned into entertainment, but I suppose anything that could potentially make our penal system more humane is good to see. 

The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster was in 2003 so I'm sure I was aware of it when it happened, but it doesn't loom as large in the American cultural memory as the Challenger explosion. So I didn't really remember much about it in detail, interesting to go over it in detail 20 years later, hear from the families of the victims, sad story. 

10:20 AM

Saturday, May 11, 2024

 





I wrote about the history of disrespectful lyrics in rap beefs for Complex. 

8:54 PM

Friday, May 10, 2024

 





I wrote about some of Steve Albini's best work for Spin. 

8:02 PM

Monthly Report: April 2024 Albums

Wednesday, May 08, 2024























1. GloRilla - Ehhthang Ehhthang
In today's hyper-cautious major label environment, 2022's Anyway, Life's Great was marketed as an EP and Ehhthang Ehhthang is marketed as a mixtape. But this is essentially GloRilla's second major label album, and it's a really satisfying step up in quality, she's getting a little more polished in her delivery and her writing without losing the edge that made her a star two years ago, "Yeah Glo" is probably her best song ever and it's not a fluke, everything's up to that quality. And the beat selection is crazy, she hits a more introspective tone on "Aite" and "GFMU - Part 2" but the tracks are still hard. Here's the 2024 albums Spotify playlist with all the new releases I've listened to this year (and some I haven't gotten around to). 

2. Pearl Jam - Dark Matter
Andrew Watt made it big as a contemporary hitmaker (Bieber, Post Malone, Dua Lupa) before becoming the guy who helps classic rockers make moderately contemporary-sounding new albums (Rolling Stones, Ozzy Osbourne, Elton John). I liked the Eddie Vedder solo album Watt produced a couple years ago, but it didn't necessarily lead me to expect that a Watt-produced Pearl Jam album would be anything special. But one of my favorite music nerd daydreams is imagining that I get a chance to produce an album by an act I love that hasn't made an essential album in a while, how I would push them to do to get their greatness back. And what Watt does here is not far off from what I'd try with Pearl Jam: get the band to jam and write in a room together instead of polishing each other's solo demos, make sure Mike McCready gets in plenty of showboating guitar solos, and take advantage of the fact that Matt Cameron is a little more metal than the drummers the band had for most of the '90s. 

3. Chayce Beckham - Bad For Me
In 2020, Chayce Beckham became the first person to win "American Idol" with an original song he wrote, "23." And for a while that was his only notable accomplishment, because winning that show isn't the ticket to an actual career in music that it once was. But "23" crept up and became an actual hit this year, and he's the only one of the last 7 "Idol" winners to get on the Hot 100, and now the only one of the last 4 winners to release an album. And Bad For Me totally fulfills the promise of "23," I really like all of it but particularly "Everything I Need" and "If I Had A Week." 

4. Maggie Rogers - Don't Forget Me
Before Maggie Rogers started her career in New York, she grew up in Easton, Maryland, an area I've never much spent time in but have driven through many many times and think of as a beautiful, idyllic little area on the eastern shore of the Cheseapeake Bay. So in my mind her third album has heavy Talbot County vibes, I kind of miss the heavier looped/electronic elements of her first two albums but I like hearing her do a mellower, more rustic record too. "I Still Do" is a great piano ballad with maybe the best vocal performance of her career, her voice sounds so good on "So Sick of Dreaming" too.

5. Virginia - Black Yacht Rock Vol. 1: City Of Limitless Access
On Pharrell Williams's 51st birthday last month, a website appeared, BlackYachtRock.com, that is streaming an entire new 10-track album that was clearly made by Pharrell, though it's credited to 'Virginia.' It's hard to say if it's just Pharrell or a group, it definitely sounds like someone else played some guitar and piano, but it's all something of a mystery for the moment. He never posted it to his own social media accounts or put it on subscription streaming services, and he's yet to make any public statements or give any interviews about it, so it's kind of flown under the radar. It's really fucking good, though, possibly better than either of Pharrell's proper solo albums, I especially dig "11:11" and "Going Back To VA." 

6. X Ambassadors - Townie
My wife loves X Ambassadors and they've really grown on me over the years, Sam Harris has a great voice, probably one of the best singers in mainstream rock in recent memory. I didn't realize until we saw the band live about 5 years ago that Harris's brother Casey plays keyboards in the band, and is blind. And there's a song on this album, "Follow the Sound of My Voice," that is sort of Sam's ode to Casey and it's a real tearjerker, it really destroyed me the first time I listened to it. 

7. Future & Metro Boomin - We Still Don't Trust You
When people heard that Future would be dropping a pair of back-to-back albums, and that the second album would be more melodic, people inevitably thought back to the 2017 twofer of FUTURE and HNDRXX. The latter is one of my favorite Future albums, and We Still Don't Trust You doesn't remotely live up to that standard, but it's still pretty enjoyable. The opening title track is hilarious, I laughed out loud the first time I heard it, and it was even funnier a couple days later when I heard it blasting out of a car driving by when I was walking into a hardware store. With 25 songs, released a month after a better album, it's definitely overkill, but there's definitely a decent share of songs that are actually really good and not just kind of funny. 

8. Taylor Swift - The Tortured Poets Department
Speaking of overkill! I guess Midnights being fairly concise was a fluke and Taylor Swift is going to keep giving us absurdly overlong albums forever. I called The Tortured Poets Department mediocre the first time I listened to it, but it's grown on me a little. Her breakup songs and end-of-relationship songs have never resonated much for me but she actually sounds like she's obsessively spiraling on this album and it's a little moving at times, she leans into the self-pity but it feels kind of more genuine than a lot of her autobiographical songwriting. I ranked Swift's albums for Spin in 2022, and have been updating those rankings when artists release new albums. So I added TTPD to the piece a few days ago, and wound up putting it a couple spots higher than I initially thought I would, although it's still firmly in the bottom half of her catalog. 

9. various artists - The New Look: Season 1 (Apple TV+ Original Series Soundtrack)
The other Jack Antonoff-produced album that was released last month is the soundtrack for "The New Look," a series that takes place in the 1940s and '50s, all of his frequent collaborators (besides Swift) singing old Tin Pan Alley songs and jazz standards. Hearing Lana Del Rey sing "Blue Skies" gave me new respect for her as a vocalist, to hear her go all the way into that retro stylized thing and nail it, the Sam Dew and Florence + The Machine tracks are great too. Antonoff is by far the worst singer on here, in fact, but the Bleachers song is kind of unobtrusive stuck toward the end of the album. 

10. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross - Challengers (Original Score)
Reznor and Ross have really been on an incredible run of scores the last 15 years, to say nothing of the great NIN music we've gotten, and I haven't seen Challengers but I understand why this one's struck a chord, they really had fun with these tracks. I got a little excited when the album ended with Reznor actually singing on one track, but Challengers director Luca Guadagnino wrote some really embarrassingly stupid lyrics for Reznor to sing on "Compress / Repress," it's kind of unfortunate.  

The Worst Album of the Month: ERNEST - Nashville, Tennessee
Lots of rap stars have a sidekick who sounds like a less charismatic mini-me version of them (DMX and Drag-On, Busta Rhymes and Spliff Star, etc.) and that's what I thought of when I listened to Ernest Keith Smith, who's co-written dozens of songs on Morgan Wallen's albums. Smith's third album (as simply 'ERNEST') is, like Wallen's albums, way too long at 26 songs, and it has big features from Wallen, Jelly Roll and Lainey Wilson. But ERNEST also sounds so much like Wallen that sometimes I think it's him singing when it isn't, and it's just a really uninspired, endless album. 

10:14 AM